{"id":1434,"date":"2015-06-28T23:19:53","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T06:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/?p=1434"},"modified":"2025-01-02T09:49:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T16:49:32","slug":"the-boy-who-was-scrappy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/28\/the-boy-who-was-scrappy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boy Who Was Scrappy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Confession time: I know very little about the voices in Scrappy cartoons. Actually, come to think about it, about the only thing I’ve known–and only because voice maven Keith Scott told me–is that Robert “Bobby” Winckler (1927-1989) was Scrappy’s voice in some shorts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now I know at least a tiny bit more. Jerry Beck alerted me to the existence of a Robert “Bobby” Winckler fan group on Facebook<\/a>–apparently run by his son, William Winckler–and it has some great photos and a couple of items which reference his Scrappy work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve borrowed a few images from the Bobby Winckler Facebook page and elsewhere for this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s Bobby Winckler as a child actor on a Hollywood backlot, circa 1933. He made more than 80 live-action films, including a number of Our Gang<\/em> shorts, Knute Rockne All American<\/em>, and Preston Sturges’ iconic Sullivan’s Travels<\/em>, and was also busy on the radio (where he played W.C. Fields’ son, among other roles).<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"winckler-backlot\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Here he is (center) serving in WWII with two friends on St. Patrick’s Day 1945 in Manila.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"winckler-manila\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Winckler eventually became a successful Hollywood lawyer, counting Spanky McFarland, Adam West, and Billy Barty among his clients. In 1980, he ran as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. Congress representing California’s 23rd district.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"voteforwinckler\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

He lost the race–but here he is, presumably in the 1980s, with his Knute Rockne<\/em> costar Dutch Reagan and George H.W. Bush.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"winckler-reagan\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Now for the Scrappy stuff. Here’s a Hollywood Radio Artists’ Directory listing which mentions his work in the series. It uses a variant spelling of his last name; as far as I know, he was not related to Charles Mintz’s wife, the former Margaret Winkler.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"winckler-directory\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

And this is a sample of the script for The City Slicker<\/em> (1938), one of the films in which Winckler voiced Scrappy.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"winckler-script\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

And here’s The City Slicker<\/em> itself–which I’m afraid features a last-gasp version of Scrappy who’s been unappealingly redesigned and who, really, has few redeeming qualities of any sort, aside from his voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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